Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday August 22, 2013 @09:52AM
from the but-it's-still-a-good-idea dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "The crowdfunding campaign to build an Ubuntu-powered smartphone has fallen short of its ambitious goal. Canonical, which works with the open-source community to support Ubuntu worldwide, decided to fund its Ubuntu Edge smartphone via crowdfunding Website Indiegogo. The funding goal was set at $32 million, and at first it looked as if the project had enough momentum to actually succeed: within the first 24 hours of the project's July 22 launch, some $3.45 million had poured in. But that torrent of cash soon slowed to a trickle. In the end, the campaign managed to amass $12,809,906 by its August 21 closing. Nonetheless, Canonical did its best to put a brave face on the situation. 'While we passionately wanted to build the Edge to showcase Ubuntu on phones, the support and attention it received will still be a huge boost as other Ubuntu phones start to arrive in 2014,' the organization wrote in a posting. 'Thousands of you clearly want to own an Ubuntu phone and believe in our vision of convergence, and rest assured you won't have much longer to wait.'"Update: 08/22 16:14 GMT by T: Oops -- headline edited to reflect that the Edge was an Indiegogo project, rather than Kickstarter.

Not for free. The campaign had to be organized, the buzz too. Basically, it would have been cheaper to make a proper market study rather than losing credibility, time and money into that. Especially since they hired someone to design the phone in the first place.

How did they loose credability? They told us up-front that if the campaign did not reach is funding goal we would get our money back. Meanwhile, everyone gets to see how much demand there is for a Edge-like phone with only a month notice and little paid marketing. In the end, I would say the campaign was successful and we will probably be seeing Edge-like phones being offered within a year or two.

Losing credibility? They made twelve million dollars...while not the intended goal, if you dare call that "loss of credibility" you aren't in your right mind. I'd like to see your company get that much support.

For about 1/10th the cost, one other FOSS phone was able to get off the ground. [fairphone.com] Actually, even though the main page says 66%, they reached their minimum goal months ago so the startup threshold is much lower than that.

Their initial market is EU-only, but I would still consider getting a FairPhone if only to have a mini-tablet with the most open hardware that's feasible at this point.

I mean 1.- The whole appeal of Ubuntu has been "free as in beer" and while some could argue "free as in freedom" Shuttleworth's "This is not a democracy" kinda kills that idea for me and besides Android is ALREADY free as in beer and is FOSS so that isn't a selling point.

2.- ARM isn't X86 and just because something can be ported from one to the other does NOT mean it will run WELL, just that it will run. Android is built around ARM, Ubuntu has always been mainl

No one trusts Canonical outside of the die-hard Ubuntu fanboys. Canonical forks everything due to their NIH syndrome. They released the buggiest, ugliest and most uselessly incoherent Desktop imaginable (Unity) and then sold their userbase to Amazon.

The Edge could be the greatest thing since sliced bread, I still wouldn't give them my money.

Weird. I actually hated Unity because of all the bloggers screaming their balls off.

Then I tried Unity myself. Just to see what I think about it.

And guess what, after the initial hurdle, it has actually made me more productive. I don't touch the mouse at all when doing normal tasks. Just press Super key, type Gim arrow down twice and enter and I get Gimp (for example).

So now I like Unity.

I DON'T like the Amazon spying, but that I can turn off. Or I can just hack the Unity sources (it's just Python). I don't

I've tried Unity, and my biggest grumble is the removal of the taskbar. If I have four papers open in different copies of evince/okular and five terminals with different names, Unity won't let me find the one I want quickly. It also won't let me see, by looking at the taskbar, if any of them have changed their titles (which some programs do to alert the user).

Heh, I wonder how many of the vocal haters bothered to do what you did: try it and modify it for your needs.I can tell you this much: The more vocal some user is about Unity and how quickly they installed Mint, the less likely to have tried it themselves.I don't use Unity myself, I use a custom KDE resembling it and using the Unity launcher API (very fun btw), but I always give Unity a try as I reinstall a newer Ubuntu version. By 13.04 it was pretty usable and looked fairly good...I believe that for users

People should be able to look at a list of their apps without having to wade through data files and a ton of OS-supplied components. We often don't remember apps by name until we have used them many, many times; OTOH infrequently used apps can still be very important, so its vexing when Unity effectively 'loses' them.

I think the maxim "change is hard" applies to this situation. It was annoying to change, but frankly, I think Unity is better than the old desktop interface. In the end it is "much ado about nothing" and people simply prefer to have things get better without enduring the learning curve of more dramatic changes. I've been using Unity for quite a while and I've found no bugs, so I don't know what people are talking about.

I started using Unity with 12.04. It was different in the sense that there is basical

I think the maxim "change is hard" applies to this situation. It was annoying to change, but frankly, I think Unity is better than the old desktop interface. In the end it is "much ado about nothing" and people simply prefer to have things get better without enduring the learning curve of more dramatic changes. I've been using Unity for quite a while and I've found no bugs, so I don't know what people are talking about.

I started using Unity with 12.04. It was different in the sense that there is basically a "Dock" rather than a "Desktop Menu" (which, frankly, makes it harder for those who don't know the name of the program they want to use; e.g. you can't just select the default mail program, you have to search on "Thunderbird").

Just tried this: typing "mail" in the unity dash brings up thunderbird as first option. Just like typing "video" brings up movie player as first option. I'm not sure exactly how this works, but the search is not based exclusively on the application title, and generally seems pretty successful at bringing up what I am looking for when I make a fairly generic search.

I left out a step there. What happened was that the new version of Ubuntu came out with Unity, people used it for a while, and one by one went "ugh, I can't deal with this" and found something else to use instead.

I have used Ubuntu since 8.10 and have 12.04.2 right now. I tried Unity and recently had to fall back to it because I broke something in Gnome Classic. I try to give competing approaches a chance, even occasionally trying Microsoft releases, but I haven't seen Win 8 as yet. The point is that if you try to use Unity on a desktop you lose the direct access you have to the nested menus you have in Gnome Classic or Gnome 2. It becomes time consuming to open dash every time you want to look for the little used

Not at all - it just shows the person's been around for a long time. I'm not sure when the last 6-digit slashdot ID was issued, but for an astroturfer to have hung around for that long would indicate remarkable persistence.

Having a low ID doesn't indicate you're right, but it, along with the concommitant posting history, does suggest you didn't just register for the purpose of astrotufing

I actually like Unity. It's only problem is bugs (and that it's spyware). If everything worked as designed, I'd be pleased as peaches. I am disappointed that I have to replace it after finding out it is spyware (probably after a year of using it).

I have disabled the tracking features (I think), but that is not enough. I cannot in good conscience continue to support the project (and very likely, I will switch from Ubuntu as well in the near future).

Pretty much. I used to think Ubuntu was awesome, but now, whenever I hear "Ubuntu" or "Canonical" I laugh. It isn't 2010 anymore and the distro is effectively dead due to Canonical's increasingly poor judgment.

As for an Ubuntu phone, I wouldn't use one if they paid me if Canonical is involved.

Canonical forks everything due to their NIH syndrome. They released the buggiest, ugliest and most uselessly incoherent Desktop imaginable (Unity) and then sold their userbase to Amazon.

We're talking about *phones* here. The bar is far, far, FAAAAARRRRRRRRRR lower than you give it credit for. Seriously, the bar is buried down a mineshaft somewhere. You'd have to get a mole machine just to see it.

The main competitors are iOS and Android.

Forks/NIH? CHECK!

Well, iOS is more or less their own thing with their own language and their own API and everything. Android pretends to be Linux but for some reason they keep fucking with stock Linux is strange and incomprehensible ways which make it work less well. Oh and inventing totally new and broken APIs which then need fixing. Android is stuffed to the gills with NIH, compared to Unity.

then sold their userbase to Amazon.

Remember the BIGGEST competitor is android here. Basically you get to choose to sell yourself to google.

The Edge could be the greatest thing since sliced bread, I still wouldn't give them my money.

Who would you give money to? I mean your points are correct and they apply to desktop systems. But phones are SO bad by comparison that Unity really is a shining beacon of standards and openness.

I think the comparison to other desktops is used as a preview as to Canonical's behavior in the phone industry. They were much worse than everyone else in the desktop market, so they might also be worse than everyone else in the phone market.

But, you are right that if they keep their model for desktops and use it in the phone, they'll only be slightly worse than the existing players (Amazon is not as usefulas a web search engine, so the edge loses points for that)

This. Unity in a phone would be a damn dream compared to how Android handles tasks and everything.I remember seeing someone saying below (I guess the post was moderated out) that Android was pretty good for usage...that is, if you only use ONE task at a time. Trying to switch tasks, specially quickly (try browsing for a file while trying to respond quickly on Skype. Even with helper apps it's not as easy as touching an icon in the left, no matter what).The app paradigm, as we know it, is only use-friendly f

Replying to own post - did I little more digging and frankly the [url=http://zeitgeist-project.com/about/]Zeitgeist[/url] package worries me a lot more than the shopping lens. A voice in the back of my head tells me that this is nothing more sinister than whatever windows since XP has been using to work out what shortcuts to populate the non-classic start menu's most recently used applications section with, but I still don't like the idea of my actions being stored like that.

If you type zeitgeist or privacy in the unity dash, you get a nice little privacy configuration widget where you can delete past history, set it to not record history for some specific programs or about files in specific folders, or even disable zeitgeist completely. Wonder how well windows XP, let alone it's successors, fare in allowing to disable this kind of stuff.

There is a thin line between fanboy and hater. And like fanboys, you are not all that rational or insightful.Call me the day you are forced to use Unity and only Unity. Until then, you are nothing but noise.

I believe they are talking about the software [ubuntu.com] which is already in active development and should in a more useable state next year. If you have a nexus device you could install the developer preview today.

The edge was an attempt to make a phone specifically meant to run this software with great hardware and massive internal storage.

I hate to say it but Ubuntu has missed the mobile boat. It would have been nice to have an open source alternate to Android and iOS. I use Android but I've got to say, it gives me the creeps the more I read about Google and how they are mining our data with seemingly no regard for their customers.

Personally I'd recommend FDroid [f-droid.org] with Cyanogen Mod. It's an open source repository of android apps. Theres lot's of trustworthy 3rd party repositories [guardianproject.info] you can add to it, and you could even make your own.

Many popular proprietary android apps also offer direct apk downloads from their website. It's actually easier than you might think to survive on android without a google account and google play.

IMO, the goal was deliberately set too high to meet. Now all the money goes back to the donators.

Huge amounts of free advertising, hype generation and likely leverage in existing negotiations with hardware vendors, care of the interest $13m worth of donations the "chumps" who bought into it loaned to Indiegogo for a couple months.

Does this money actually go to a project before it reaches the end-date? The details on the site don't really mention either way.On KS projects, your donation is more of a pledge, which only goes through if the target is made by the end-date of the project.

Does this money actually go to a project before it reaches the end-date? The details on the site don't really mention either way.On KS projects, your donation is more of a pledge, which only goes through if the target is made by the end-date of the project.

Loaned to Indiegogo... the project doesn't get it, but you can make a LOT of money off the float.

That was my point -- the people who "donated" basically lost the interest on all of that money, Canonical got free advertising, and Indiegogo makes a lot of money off the interest. Everyone wins! Except the people who donated in good faith. (Although, frankly, it should've been obvious to anyone that they'd never actually be able to manufacture a quality phone at that small of a number of units at that price poi

So when you "donate" to a project IndieGoGo gets the money immediately?I suppose that works well for them as an operational cost (and frankly, at an individual contribution rate most people aren't likely to make much interest,).

If you're worried about that, then the Kickstart model might work better. Your "pledge" doesn't get charged to your account (credit card/paypal/etc) until the project reaches the minimum funding+cutoff date.

The Kickstarter price for one phone was about $700. If I want to get a phone with a Linux derivative, I can get the newest Nexus for $300. No matter what my free software convictions and Google paranoia are, they're not worth that much. Particularly for vaporware.

Actually it does matter a great deal. A key difference is what happens to the money if the project is not funded to the goal level. On kickstarter if the project misses its goal, no money changes hands. On indiegogo campaigns can be set up as "Flexible Funding" and the hosts get whatever is pledged (minus 9% for fees).

On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. This way, no one is expected to develop a project with an insufficient budget, which sucks. Remember you set your own funding goal, so aim to raise the minimum amount you'll need to create your vision. Projects can always raise more than their goal, and often do.

If your campaign is set up as Flexible Funding, you will be able to keep the funds you raise, even if you don't meet your goal. If your campaign is set up as Fixed Funding, all contributions will be returned to your funders if you do not meet your goal. Flexible Funding campaigns that meet their goal are only charged 4% as our platform fee, whereas campaigns that do not meet their goal are charged 9%.

Actually it does matter a great deal. A key difference is what happens to the money if the project is not funded to the goal level. On kickstarter if the project misses its goal, no money changes hands. On indiegogo campaigns can be set up as "Flexible Funding" and the hosts get whatever is pledged (minus 9% for fees).

Sure, but this particular indiegogo campaign was fixed funding, so everyone is now getting their money back.

This campaign was launched at enthusiasts who are mostly spec obsessed and they did not have complete specs on the device. There was no working prototype either so for most of us it was too rich to throw money in without knowing what we would get and how it would perform. That leaves Ubuntu fanboys, seems there are quite a few:-D

Man-O-Man do the Ubuntu fanboys annoy me. Canonical never really expected the fundraiser to succeed? This was all a marketing exercise? Come on, you'll give yourself a lot more credibility if you just admit this was a dismal failure.

They like to mention the fact that the Ubuntu Edge campaign holds a record for most pledges, but It holds the record for the largest unsuccessfully funded project too.

Linux users are cheap, there is no money to be made from them. The top selling app in Ubuntu App store h

So all the talk about an Ubuntu phone, but I saw a couple of weeks ago, I think it was on Gismodo, a small set-top box, that could easily replace a desk-side box and with a USB hub add in your existing peripherals, for $99. The device used mobile chips, low power and a flash disk.

So five years ago I bought a $300 desk-side box, Athlon-64 dual processor, 320 GB HDD, and 2 Gig ram. I would guess that if someone offered a processor that was x86 compatable, that I could run Linux off a USB stick or off the f

Considering that hasn't happened with laptops yet, I'd be very surprised to see it happen with phones, at least in the near future. Just like with laptops and desktops, just because you can mostly get the same performance in a much smaller form factor doesn't mean everyone's going to want to pay the premium for the smaller size.

the key difference is laptops are big, heavy and unwieldy and nobody likes to lug them around for the sake of it. Since you are going to have a smartphone with you at all times either way, why not give it even more utility? Most people don't have elaborate needs that require full blown PC monster, but would love to have access to all their shit wherever they go. If the phone can provide that, great.

Good graphics cards are big. Most people don't need them, true, but PC gaming is still very much alive - Diablo 3 has sold about 15 million copies. That's about a half _billion_ dollars right there, for one game.

People have been predicting the death of the desktop for decades, whether due to consoles, laptops, mobiles, whatever. It's never going to happen while good graphics cards and processors need a lot of cooling, and therefore are big.

Good graphics cards are big. Most people don't need them, true, but PC gaming is still very much alive - Diablo 3 has sold about 15 million copies. That's about a half _billion_ dollars right there, for one game.

Sure, your converged phone won't replace a gaming rig for hardcore gamers, but not everyone games, and not everyone who does does so on the PC.

People have been predicting the death of the desktop for decades, whether due to consoles, laptops, mobiles, whatever. It's never going to happen while good graphics cards and processors need a lot of cooling, and therefore are big.

Who's talking about death of the desktop? Desktop is useful for some people. But again, not everyone games on the PC, strange as it may seem to you. With 16GB of ram on my laptop, I could easily do all my development work on my laptop, once attached to a bigger screen and keyboard.

The only reason laptops haven't taken over from desktops is that you can't make a laptop do what a desktop does for a similar price, and in some cases not at all. Good luck getting similar performance from a phone.

Newsflash: laptops HAVE taken over desktops, in the sense that more laptops are sold th

In some places it has. For instance, my mom is in a job that often requires her to work from home. So her company gave her a laptop that is secured and can access their network at her house. At work, she puts the laptop in a dock that is connected to a monitor: dual monitor workstation. When she goes home she takes the laptop with her to use at home if needed. It really is much more efficient and cheaper than giving her a desktop for work and a laptop for home use.

Considering that hasn't happened with laptops yet, I'd be very surprised to see it happen with phones, at least in the near future. Just like with laptops and desktops, just because you can mostly get the same performance in a much smaller form factor doesn't mean everyone's going to want to pay the premium for the smaller size.

While it hasn't completely happened with laptops, it has to a great extent. At my office, most people get assigned laptops. 80% of the time, they are attached to a keyboard/mouse/monitor. The only people I know who buy desktops at home tend to be gamers or developers. Everyone else buys laptops. So no, they may never _completely_ replace desktops, but they might for the average user.

It's gotten to the point where it's almost odd for me to see a desktop now. At my office only a few people still have desktops because they're not up for a replacement yet. Those that are get a laptop. I've got a laptop now that sits docked most of the time, connected to my external mouse/keyboard and dual monitors. Same thing at home - my laptop replaced my desktop, but when it's time to do Real Work it gets connected to my external mouse/keyboard and dual monitors. Aside from serious gaming I don't s

I hadn't really thought about that. There's nothing that distinguishes a smartphone from a PC with a 4G Card. Still, I bet there's a patent submarining around somewhere waiting for us to dare try using a very small computer as something more than a consumption device.

The smartphone is severely limited in its interface, its power, its scope, its precision, and its visuals.

No. Smartphones are limited in their intended uses sure, but the hardware is very capable of general purpose work. Smartphones are increasing in power at a much faster rate than desktop and laptop machines.

PCs have no such limitations.

Wat.

There is still a desktop market, and always will be; don't let the naysayers clutching their toy phones tell you any differently.

Desktops are cheaper, but outside of very specialised applications, laptops are good enough for most uses. In fact, modern smartphones are good enough.

This is your only hope now that we've proved that betting the farm on a toy device is not a smart idea.

Nobody was betting the farm on this. It was just an idea. People probably said the same thing about personal computers (vs mainframes) back in the 70s/80s.

The same thing was said about personal computers. Ken Olsen, CEO of DEC, said something to this effect in the early 1980's. Thing is, he was right for his time. Computers then were just high end gaming systems. They plugged into the TV, often the keyboard was lousy and the computer itself was under the keyboard. It was useless out of the box without another $50-$200 in accessories to be able to save data. The idea of a computing platform hadn't been invented yet, so an upgrade to a new machine from the same

Better overall? I don't think you can make such an assessment. They're potentially better for higher specced components due to better heat dissipation, and getting to choose your own parts, sure. But better for everyday uses? Better for taking with you everywhere you go? Nope.

Well, I considered gaming on PC quite a specialised application these days, but I've just looked at the numbers and the market has surged quite a bit since 2010. But a lot of games still run well on moderately specced laptops.

A netbook isn't good enough for web browsing? The only reason I can't use a phone or tablet for 100% of my internet use, is that some youtube videos aren't allowed "on mobile" for some stupid reason.

I used a netbook as my primary development and home usage machine for several months, simply to squash my ego somewhat (before that I'd always gone for the most powerful machines I could). It was actually surprisingly usable. For doing more engineering oriented work I did need to remote into more powerful computers though, so now I have an ultrabook.

No one is going to twist your arm and make you have a smartphone that can double as a PC. It's just something else that quadcore computer with a gig or two memory in you pocket could already be doing. In a couple of years these could be the $100 prepaid phone that you can buy at the supermarket.

I don't any downside to being "allowed" to use my pocket computer to its "god intended" potential.

I think Canonical's mistake was limiting the campaign to a single month. I am sure there were a lot of people that wanted the phone but did not have the liquid cash to purchase one with only a month notice. If it was a three month campaign, I could see them reaching their goal.

The main proposed feature of Ubuntu Phone (the name of the OS under development) is to turn a fast quadcore phone with HDMI out and Bt into a Desktop PC when you plug it into a monitor/TV/projector. So you might get your wish, but it'll be for a PC that you can carry in your pocket and use as a standard Android phone the rest of the time

While I was not interested in the piece of bling that the Edge represented, I would pay for the finished OS for my next phone in maybe 6mos to a year.